


The world is gone

by faceofstone



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-02 10:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12725037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: Dale and Carrie in absolute darkness, in search of a profile of trees.





	The world is gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ghostcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostcat/gifts).



 

 

The same terrible, deafening cry that burst the streetlights into shards and reached the skies to tear down all the stars shattered Dale Cooper's hope and left it in pieces, sharp, cold and jagged. In the Sheriff's station, a lifetime ago, he had said:  _ I hope to see all of you again, every one of you _ , and he had meant it, and he had held onto it, that one image, the guiding beacon for his eventual return as he strode further and further away. Now the lights are out. There is no comfort left in the memory of the fold of Gordon's wrinkles, in the sharp questioning frown of the young agent Dale knows but never met, Albert's rookie, and how it mirrors Albert's own, nor in the score of other fading friendly faces he turned his back to, nor in Harry's sweet smile further away. The picture is all frayed edges now. When he holds what's left of it, he bleeds. Dale Cooper, too, wishes he could scream.

 

He doesn't scream, because he did this, he did, Dale Bartholomew Cooper and no-one else, to himself, to Laura (or Carrie), to the ones he left behind with their wounds which he caused and won't be there to mend, he doesn't scream because the man who has dug his own grave has no right to voice complaints and is buried deep under the ground, too far away from help, or

He screams, pushing twenty-five years of stasis out of his veins and nerves and skin, delayed reaction hitting him at once, an amorphous expression of loss, but there is no air to carry that sound in the emptiness of the space beyond all lights and all the pain and sound die in his throat, or

He wants to scream and finds a hiss unfurling in his lungs instead, and doesn't risk setting it free, so

He remains silent.

 

And he takes her hand, at the convergence of a nebulous constellation of identities and motives - he knows she's Laura and he acknowledges she's Carrie, he'll help, he's scared, she's not alone, he's asking for forgiveness, what else matters in the dark. It's a first step toward repentance, a bashful smile won't cut it when she's in pain, not that she could see it, nor the guilt on his face, anyway. There's a way of offering an apology on the tips of one's fingers and Dale fails this too, because she does not accept it, does not grab his hand like he's worth holding onto, like she did in the woods, but she doesn't break contact either. At the very least it is better, they tacitly agree, if they don't get lost.

 

They can still perceive the looming shape of the house, which used to be a sick and ominous white blot standing out like a hole in the dark of the night, when there still was a night. Now there is no night and there may be no house anymore, or it may still be out there just beyond their reach, filled with ghosts, but does it matter? It wasn't home. They drag their steps back across the street, which in the absence of references has stretched into an immense black clearing filled with black architectures in ruins, and to the car, or their memory of it.

 

They wait for the dawn.

 

Carrie fastens her seatbelt with a click. 

The car is its own safe microcosm, a closed space with simple, tangible borders. They exist within its limits, made of metal, plastic and leather. For all of Dale's tinkering, the car radio remains stuck on the faintest static buzzing, stubbornly refusing to give them any signs from a world beyond the windshield.

 

“Are you feeling well?,” Dale asks, eventually. His voice is distant but soft in a way he was not expecting. The question lingers, his companion doesn't reply.

His hand has gone back to resting atop hers ever since he gave up on the radio and that small contact has been a source of great comfort to him, but he realizes that, once again, she may just be indulging him. He brought her here. The reasons for his action don't matter, although it was nice to think that he could give her a home when he had none for himself. The result remains that her scream is still echoing in his ears. He takes his hand back.

 

She hums. “This is not the way I was thinking this’d go, you know?”

“I know.”

“Do you mean the blackout? Or the hand? There’s people payin’ to drive a girl to a drive-in and sit in the dark like this, you know, and the way the story goes, usually, they don't stay sittin’ like this for long.”

There is no expectation in her voice and little emotion, like the wound that had opened on an abyss of screaming had been forcefully stitched up again. She is Laura Palmer, but she is not Laura Palmer right now. He wonders if she can't be Laura Palmer right now. He wonders if he is Dale Cooper right now. He wonders if Laura Palmer would ever muse about stolen drive-in kisses with the quiet resignation of someone who has seen it happen over and over and has been none the happier nearly every single time. He calls this resignation Carrie Page, but what does he know of what is and is not Carrie Page. He would ask, look for Laura, but the last time he pushed her to be Laura wasn't his finest moment. Instead, he tells himself, scout's honor, when it is time, he will ask her again who she is, and listen to her answer.

“It's not how we do things in the FBI.”

“Huh. I don't know why, I thought you did.”

For sure, that's how their meetings went beyond the curtains. Kisses and secrets. That's how his meetings went, on average. He remembers Diane's lips wet by her tears and yet he kept going. Not his finest moment either. He hasn't had a lot of those, lately, has he.

“I meant the blackout.”

“Okay.”

 

They share a pack of chips they left in the glove compartment, taking turns at matching its nondescript industrial taste with the pictures they remember being printed on the bag. Bacon, pizza, barbecue, bacon again but by then Dale is thinking cheese. Ginger is not a serious answer, Carrie, please focus. Their voices are far too loud and chipper, the very idea of having fun withers under that black sky but that's why Dale holds this moment so dear. They can't find a consensus before the last handful's gone. Dawn doesn't come.

 

They rest like centuries of weariness are falling off their shoulders. Dale cannot say if the darkness he opens his eyes into is the same as the one that surrounded them before he closed them, over and over, only that each time he can hear Carrie snoring beside him.

 

“We could drive…” Her voice sounds like it is lingering in a dream. “...far, far away. Until the end of the world. And we'd look down beyond to… search for the light. But then we'd risk falling off the edge. We would, wouldn't we. We… we the fuck-ups, the big mistakes.” She shuffles in her seat, straightening up her back, her vision cleared up in front of her. “We would fall… faster and faster. For a long time we wouldn't feel anything. And then we'd burst into fire. Forever…”

Dale adds in a reverent whisper: “...and the angels wouldn't help us, because they've all gone away.”

It's a chant, an ancient spell they carried in their blood. They know they have stumbled upon something old, a buried truth, they know their eyes are meeting in the dark. Dale snaps out of it and jumps out of the car.

“We're going.”

 

“To the end of the world? On foot?” She follows him outside.

“Nobody's coming. We said it. Think of our words: there  is no help.” They walk.

“And if we fall off?”

“Carrie, the world is round.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I'm not.” He has, after all, been wrong before.

As they talk, black air builds up around them. There is nothing to their sides, only dense, unbreathable walls. They can't stray. They press on. They walk through a quaint residential neighborhood in the town of Twin Peaks, but their feet haven't touched asphalt since they left the car. Their steps fall on brushwood, the ground is barren underneath. Dale stops to untangle a twig from the hem of his pants and catches himself thinking of fall, of the familiar burn of a hot cup of coffee on his fingertips at the start of a walk in the woods, its bitter scent blending with wet soil and rotten leaves.

Funny how it goes, without a goal. The mind has a tendency to wander. If he lingered on it some more the blurred shapes at the edge of that vision would gain traits, identities, he would hear their voices calling out to him to start walking or they'd never make it back to the RR by lunch. And then his heart would break, and there's a reason he has remained empty and focused for so long.

 

“Hey, mister. What's the light at the end of the tunnel?”

Dale tenses. He strains his eyes to find a dot on the horizon, any sign of the end of their journey, but there are only black shapes floating on black walls, black clouds on black valleys. He turns to face her, the direction of her voice, to make sure he's looking where she's looking, but she keeps on walking, same as she has been walking for the past hours, tapping her fingers on her jeans, shaking her curls, and Dale accepts that the question might just have been metaphorical.

“That’s a good question.”

“Well, I have my moments.”

So he looks far into the distance, as if the darkness they are buried under were a real tunnel made of stone, deep under the mountains, with a real arch at the end framing a real sky awaiting them outside, and pictures a place to rest. A place he belongs. All that comes up is a list of crossed-out places and blurred pictures, faded photographs from all the lives he didn't live and left behind. There's a lump in his throat he's not ready to acknowledge, one that grew with each day he spent in Vegas curled into a life that wasn't his and torn apart by aimless nostalgia for a home he couldn't place on a map, with people who'll have forgotten him and moved on.

 

“I see a sign. A wooden arrow with a line of little lightbulbs all around it. Like Christmas lights - not the flashing kind. The ones with the dark green wire. The sign says in white paint - cursive, left slant - that there's a gas station not far ahead.” He finds comfort in the thought of this direction toward a neutral liminal space, a place at the crossroads of unnamed highways where he could lie down while the lives of others passed him by.

“Really? Not even the gas station, which as a home is, how do I put it, depressing, just the sign?”

“You asked. And the station is nearby. It's still better than the car seats.”

“If they have beds, sure.”

“Beds  _ and _ a diner. Fresh pie.”

“Do you think they have a stage, too?”

“In the middle of nowhere? Why not. I'll bet they do.”

“Then… then I want to go.” She pauses, considering their imaginary options. “We'll walk in, order chicken wings, and a spotlight will shine on a beautiful singer on the stage, painting her white jacket with such bright pinks and purples as the sequins on her shirt reflect it in a million sparkles. It's so pretty… She'll start playing her music, a sad song, very chipper but very sad, and singing it too, and her friends will accompany her on their keyboards…” She starts humming a song in minor key. Dale has never heard of it, but then, that's hardly surprising. “ _ Don't see the sorrow _ ”, says her song. “ _ Don’t let it creep up your skin… 'cause I read somewhere, what you like, you'll find again… you'll find it again…”  _ It trails off into an offkey hum. “Back then when I had plans, I used to want to sing in a band, you know. With my friends. Well… one friend, one cousin who was also a friend. I wonder where she is, now?”

 

Carrie falls silent. There was a faint electrical spark in her words, but Dale cannot tell whether it short-circuited everything again or ended up resting at the bottom of a huge and empty battery.

“Enough about that. What is your light at the end of the tunnel?”, he asks in a gentle voice that is only trying to be helpful, a softness that feels like a faint spark to him, too, or like putting on a decades-old suit to see if it still fits, and maybe it does, once you stretch the sleeves and get past an uncomfortable itch on your left side.

She turns around to look at him - to look past him and straight into the darkness.

“At the end of the tunnel… there is a line. It's a line of trees at the edge of the woods, and it's on fire.”

“Was it your home?”

“No. That's just how it goes.”

Dale cannot argue with that.

 

Mounds of leaves under their backs, they rest on makeshift beds, with no trees that could have grown them. Dale lies with his eyes open. He makes up new constellations in the dark - sad, regretful shapes that only come out in the absence of stars. He can almost believe he'd be able to fall asleep again, one day.

Then Carrie has crawled by his side and her hands are on his face, fingertips creeping from his hairline down to his ears and the base of his neck. The touch reminds him of Diane's, how she covered his eyes and nose and mouth on that last night in the motel as she tried to erase his image and the memory of him. A failed exorcism: he is still here. She is not. If Carrie could push him down into the earth and leave him to disappear, he would not fight back, but her hands explore him with a curiosity that feels like she is looking for something, rather than pushing it away. 

She follows a fault line that was already there, carved along his jaw. Something clicks. Unlocks. Dale shivers. The cold slips under his nerves and muscles.

“Who are you?” Dale asks. This is not the Odessa waitress who didn't know where Washington state was. The woman sitting beside him is brimming with electricity.

“Who is Carrie?” Is it an answer to Dale's question?

“Are you searching for her? On my face?”

“You... stole.”

He could stop her, but he's tired of force and he's tired of calling the shots and so he lets his hands drop on his chest. The end of that sentence never comes. He stole… did he? It's not what he set out to do. But did he? Did he…?

Her fingers take hold of a lid that should not be there and pull. His face, she holds his face and pulls it back. Cracked open, sweating cold under the weight of an endless night, Dale is forced to confront the emptiness in his body, spaces never visited and never filled. There might be monsters there, and something foul has been lashing out inside him ever since he realized they had no home left, no path, no guidance.

 

“There's a wood in here. A line of trees.” 

Breathing close to his face, staring with mild curiosity into the depths of him she laid bare, this Carrie speaking with her detached singsong; Laura's spark is gone again, for now. Dale closes his eyes and listens: there are owls in there, in these uncharted territories inside him. And monsters, for sure, but none nearby. He takes a blind step forward and knows that his companion is already ahead.

There is a wood - trees grow in his head. Trees can take root. There is a wood and a narrow path under their feet.

 

Far ahead, up above a line of barren hills, the full moon rises. A crossroad awaits them, under the purple evening sky. It's too early to make out the directions on the sign, but there's no hurry: they'll figure it out when they get there.


End file.
